Monday, July 18, 2011

"Sheikh Raed Salah is one of the main leaders of the approximately one and half million strong Palestinian community inside Israel.

But he was arrested last month in London while on a speaking tour to highlight the plight of Palestinians in Israel, and the threat to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The arrest followed a media campaign by the right-wing press who accused Salah of being an anti-semite and a supporter of terrorism, accusations he strongly denies.
The sheikh has been incarcerated for two weeks now. But at a hearing at the High Court in London his lawyers argued that he should be freed pending a deportation hearing.
They said his detention was based on false claims of anti-semitism, that he posed no security risk and that his high-profile made it impossible for him to abscond.
But lawyers for the Home Secretary argued that Salah should never have entered the UK in the first place because he had been excluded.
They said that his presence in the UK was not conducive to the public good and that if he were released this would legitimize his views in the eyes of the ordinary person.
Delivering his judgment the judge said that he wasn't convinced that Raed Salah would abscond and he said that his detention had been unlawful. He ordered that he be released on £50,000 bail and be subject to a curfew, an electronic tag and a media blackout.
This was a mixed verdict for Raed Salah. On the one hand he will be released from prison on Monday pending his deportation hearing. But on the other hand, he will be subject to stringent bail conditions and will effectively be silenced.

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